Generally, aerial vehicles are used in various high-risk scenarios due to their capability to quickly fly in remote, dangerous, and even inaccessible areas, thereby providing useful information to users. These aerial vehicles serve various functions, including reconnaissance, mapping, inspection of partially collapsed structures, and victim localization.
These beneficial functions are better served by aerial vehicles that are easy to transport to a mission area. One postulated solution to improve portability is to make a “pocket sized” (e.g. small, light-weight, and readily carried and deployable by a person) aerial vehicle. This solution includes reducing the size of the propellers of the aerial vehicle, however this produces insufficient thrust to carry any useful payload, such as a camera. Additionally, reconfigurable beams or detachable appendages have also been utilized. However these often require a user to manually connect the system parts to create a deployable state, potentially resulting in human user errors. Manual connection/assembly also requires additional time, which increases proportionally with the number of aerial vehicles to be deployed, thereby limiting the magnitude of aerial vehicle dispersal. Further, when passively actuated (e.g., elastically), the unfolding of the beams is irreversible, thereby requiring a user to fold the arms after use.